Dead Man's Hand (9 page)

I swallowed and looked at the floor, then
back at the hand. “It’s not Lester Rincon’s hand,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow. “But you said the
zombie’s right hand was missing.”

“
It was. And there was
another body there, too. Another dead zombie with a missing
hand.”

“
And you think this
one…”

I nodded.

“
But why would Pete lie
about it?”

“
Because he didn’t want to
tell you whose hand it really was.”

She just looked at me, still not getting
it.

“
You said he was driving
past your father’s place when he saved you from the
satyrs.”

Now she got it. Her confusion was gone,
replaced by horror. I knew it would only get worse as she thought
about how she’d kept this hand in her fridge for the last couple of
days, and worse still as she thought of how her father had finally
ended up in the middle of a zombie massacre.

She stared at the dead man’s hand, still
impotently typing her name the way Max Patterson had typed it
compulsively all the times he’d messaged her in life. Pixel put her
hand to her mouth and turned away in horror.

“
Pete…” she
started.

“
Fulfilled the contract on
your father. And then he saved you from the satyrs and had you in
the car with the cooler. When you asked what was in it, he couldn’t
help himself, had to say what it was, maybe to impress you, but
couldn’t say whose hand it was.”

“
And he killed Rincon,
too?”

“
Probably the same night.
Probably showed Clancy the trophy and then threw it away. He’d
never considered the possibility of what could be done with that
hand until you told him. And when you started asking questions, he
just plugged Rincon’s name in. Probably the first thing that came
into his mind. And then he didn’t know how to back out of the lies
once they’d started.”

“
So my father’s
really…”

“
I’m sorry,
Pixel.”

I didn’t want to say more, but I knew that
Max Patterson’s handless body had likely been in Pete’s trunk as he
drove Pixel home that night. I was sure Pixel would figure that
out, too, without my telling her.

The tears started falling then, big drops
spilling over her lower lashes and onto her cheeks. I decided it
would be the decent thing to offer a hug, so I put my hands on her
shoulders. She turned her face into my chest and started
sobbing.

I held her, watching over her shoulder as
the hand continued typing her name.

She got it together after a minute or so and
took a few deep breaths as the tears abated. I leaned back, my arms
still around her, and looked down at her.

It was one of those things that just
happen.

I hadn’t meant it, hadn’t planned it, but my
eyes went down her blouse. It was only a second of staring at the
swell of her breasts, and then my eyes were up again, looking over
her shoulder, not wanting to make eye contact.

No silver crucifix hung around her neck, no
martyred figure dangled in her cleavage.

I didn’t know how she knew the werewolf from
the Gaudy Mirage, whether she’d paid him or if he just owed her a
favor. It didn’t matter. She’d set me up, and I’d fallen for
it.

Idiot
, I thought.

I just stood there with her like that, not
sure what to do. As vulnerable as she was now, I might have been
able to provide more than comfort. A few more hugs, some rubbing of
her back, and maybe I’d be behind that curtain of beads that
separated this room from her bedroom. It would be lousy of me, but
it would be fitting revenge for all she’d put me through the last
couple of days and nights.

Instead, I just leaned forward and kissed
the top of Pixel’s head, a fatherly gesture, intentionally so, and
one calculated to hurt as much as to comfort.

“
Sorry, kid,” I said.
“Better luck next time, huh?”

Then I turned and walked across the room. At
the open door, I turned for a moment to see her still standing
there, not having moved, the dead man’s hand still on the tablet.
She’d have to figure out what to do with it now. And for a second
or two, I thought of closing the door again and walking back to
her.

But then through the open window beyond her,
there came a distant howl on the evening air.

The moon was still full, and my people were
out there, calling to me.

I stepped out into the hall and pulled the
door closed behind me.

* * * * *

Author’s
Note

Thank you for
reading
Dead Man’s Hand.
I had a lot of fun writing it and hope you
enjoyed reading it. I’ve been a fan of hard-boiled noir-style
mysteries for a long time. When I started developing the idea of a
lawyer who represented the undead, I decided that it just made
sense to give the story the same feeling as those older stories
I’ve enjoyed for so long. It was a lot fun developing Ace and the
world he inhabits.

As an independent novelist, it’s
both challenging and rewarding to get my books into the hands of
readers, and I’m glad this book found its way into yours. If you
enjoyed it, would you do me a favor and post a review to the site
you purchased from? I would be most grateful if you did. There are
a lot of books out there, and readers’ reviews and recommendations
are some of the best ways to help a book get noticed.

I’d also love to
hear from you, so feel free to get in touch through my
Facebook
page
or the Contact page at my
website
.

You can also sign
up for my
Free
Newsletter
to be kept up to
date on new releases, special promotions, and
giveaways.

I’ve included a
sneak peek of the second Ace Stubble novella,
Unfinished Business
, in which Ace
takes on a ghost with a big house and bigger secrets. I hope you
like it.

Thanks again for reading.
Best wishes,

Richard Levesque

Sneak Peek:
Unfinished Business

It’s another open and shut case for Ace
Stubble, lawyer for the undead and disembodied. At least that’s
what he thinks. When Cordelia Dearborn—a ghost with a shady
past—hires Ace to rid her home of pesky, freeloading descendants,
Ace figures he’ll have no problem collecting his fee. But there’s
more to this case than a cranky old ghost and houseful of unwanted
people.
Everyone in the Dearborn family—the living, the dead, and the
mentally ill—has a secret or two, and Ace can’t avoid getting
caught up in all of them. It doesn’t help that Cordelia’s beautiful
granddaughter seems willing to do anything to keep from being
evicted. It’s all such a mess that no one—neither the living nor
the dead—seems aware that there’s bigger trouble brewing in the
house. Ace Stubble has faced danger before, but is he ready for
what’s living in the basement of the Dearborn estate?

From
Unfinished
Business

Copyright © 2013 Richard Levesque

Chapter
One

So there I was—alone in the dark with the
woman I loved. We held each other tightly, our hearts beating hard
against each other, our emotions beyond anything words could
express. You’d think it would have been a perfect scenario, one of
those times you look back on later as a defining moment in your
life, a time when everything lined up just right and yet just so
fleetingly that you’d spend the rest of your life trying to find
that perfect combination of touch and intimacy again.

Like I said, that’s what you’d think.
Unfortunately, the moment was far from perfect. For one thing, she
was bleeding from several nasty cuts. For another, the thing that
had done the damage to her still had us in its sights and appeared
to be gearing up for another attack. Worse, it had more tentacles
than I’d yet been able to count. And to top it all off, I knew that
if I could somehow manage to get us out of this mess, there was
still a good chance the house would be torched by a well-meaning
but misguided mob before my lady love and I could make it out the
door.

Not my best Sunday evening by a long shot,
and yet still likely to be remembered as a defining moment in my
life. Maybe the final one. And to think that two short days before,
I’d been fantasizing that the weekend’s work would be nothing less
than easy money. Not exactly taking candy from a baby, but
close.

More like taking candy from a ghost.

Maybe if I start at the beginning, it’ll
make more sense.

*****

Some people have a tough time knowing when a
ghost has entered the room. A spirit can waft past them, mess with
them in creepy or humiliating or just plain harmless ways, and the
poor sap never knows he’s been toyed with or even haunted unless
the ghost wants its presence known. Not me, though. I’m pretty
finely tuned when it comes to picking up the vibrations of the
undead, and though a ghost may be subtler than a vampire, it’s
still all the same to me.

I usually like working with ghosts,
actually. They make good informants—the ones you can trust
anyway—and they work cheap. Most are so damned bored by their
afterlife existence that picking up a job or two from me comes as a
relief from the monotony. It only works, though, on spirits whose
post-corporeal existence isn’t tied to a specific place. It takes
an awful lot of luck to run into a ghost who’s haunting the
particular building you need information on. No, it’s the free
agents, the wandering spirits looking for some sense of purpose who
make the best apparitional contacts for a guy like me.

It was a Friday afternoon
when I met Cordelia Dearborn, or should I say the
former
Cordelia Dearborn.
The clock on the wall said 3:20, a little early for closing up, but
that’s exactly what I was pondering. It had been a busy week with
three court dates, a couple of depositions, and a judge who’d
chewed me out because my client had been late, only to find out
that the client—a shape shifter—had been in the courtroom all along
in the form of a seeing eye dog. It was just my luck that no one
had noticed he wasn't attached to a bona fide blind person. So,
with my calendar cleared for the rest of the day and a lazy weekend
stretching out ahead of me, the prospect of hanging around the
office until 4:00 just wasn’t all that attractive. My favorite
barstool at the Gaudy Mirage was calling to me, and I was ready to
answer.

I scanned my date book to see what insults
the coming week had in store for me, then flipped it shut and
pushed away from my desk, ready to stand up and head out. That’s
when I felt it—a sense of cold that’s not exactly cold, a chill
that doesn’t come from a drop in temperature or even one you can
feel on your skin. It’s more like being chilled from the inside
out, like your marrow’s just been replaced with ice water and your
body wants nothing more than to shudder and shiver itself into
warmth again. It’s a feeling I don’t get any other time than when a
ghost is in the room and hasn’t chosen to make its presence known.
The sensation began to fade after a few seconds, the same way you
get used to a bad smell or the sight of a corpse in a casket, and I
leaned back in my chair to look around the office.

“
It’s not polite to lurk,
you know,” I said, glancing toward the ceiling. I didn’t like the
thought of addressing a particular spot in the room, of talking
toward the other chair, say, or the door when the ghost was
actually perched on my desk or looking out my window. Making it
obvious that I didn't know where the presence was would only give
the spirit the upper hand, and a ghost with a superiority complex
is hardly something I relish dealing with.

My comment got no response, so I kept
talking.

“
You here for a reason, or
just bumping around old office buildings looking for a chain to
rattle?” Still nothing. I shrugged and then leaned forward to put
my elbows on the table, making a show of flipping through scattered
papers as though I had better things to do. “You looking for a
lawyer? If so, you came to the right place. Not many other people
in this town’d be willing to give a ghost the time of day. Me,
though, I’m happy to help.” Another shrug. “Can’t read minds,
though. Sorry if my ads made it seem like I’m more than I
am.”

I was referring to the ad I'd started
running in the little throwaway papers the last couple of weeks. It
had a picture of me, one I wasn’t happy with, standing between a
werewolf and a vampire. I pointed at the camera while my companions
looked earnestly at it. The caption read, “Is the law making you
feel less than human? Ace Stubble can help.” It had my phone and
license numbers and a couple of testimonial quotations in bubbles
around the perimeter. I hated it, preferring to get business
through word of mouth—the method that had always worked best. But
the salesman who’d come around a few weeks before had talked a good
game and made lots of promises; the ad was cheap and the exposure
wide, so I figured I hadn’t much to lose—beyond a few dollars and
my dignity.

In response to the continued silence, I just
let go with a heavy sigh and got up from my desk the way I’d been
planning to a few minutes before. “Sorry I can't help you, then,” I
said and began moving toward the door. “I’d ask you to lock up, but
I suppose that would be absurd,” I added, pulling the little ring
of keys from my pocket. “You should drop in again sometime if the
spirit moves you. Oh...sorry about that. Where are my manners?”